


All That Matters

by Blazing_Fire01



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Close death, F/M, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, pidge gets owie, pidge realizes that some people actuALLY CARE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 09:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14808725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blazing_Fire01/pseuds/Blazing_Fire01
Summary: “W-We actually did it…it worked!” Lance’s voice came over the intercom, echoing through her helmet.“Great job, team,” Shiro spoke up. He sounded so proud...so happy.“Team? If it wasn’t for Pidge’s quick thinking, who knows where we might be, Shiro,” Allura reminded.The com fell silent. Pidge could almost picture the smile fading off of everyone’s faces as they looked around in confusion when they didn’t see the green lion floating alongside them.There was a beat of silence before Lance spoke up. “....Pidge?”--When facing the brink of a teammate's death, team Voltron starts to realize how important they are to each other.





	All That Matters

“Pidge? Pidge, where--” A chorus of her teammates voices echoed through her helmet and over her intercom. 

“Come on, team,” Shiro. Pidge found herself trying to keep an ID on everyone who spoke, just to keep herself distracted. “Spread out. Set sights for her lion. She’s gotta be around here somewhere.” 

The green paladin stared up at the ceiling of her lion. Her vision was fuzzy, almost like her helmet’s visor wasn’t providing the eye prescription she wore in place of her glasses, as it usually did.   
Pidge looked out the front window of her lion. She would receive the occasional window that revealed her teammate’s worried face. First Hunk. Then Allura. Then Lance. All of them sitting in the pilot’s seat of their respective lions.   
Aside from that, all she saw was the cracked window of her lion’s main window, and plenty of soil.   
She could tell just from observation that The Lion had taken a nose dive straight into the ground. But that didn’t explain the unmistakable smell of smoke from an out of control fire. Or the fact that when Pidge tried to part her lips to speak, she only felt them crack and begin to bleed. Or any other pain Pidge might have felt.   
That’s not how the plan should have went. Was it? The only attempt was to fight against that giant bear thing that the Paladin’s of Voltron had received a distress call over when it had begun to attack an inhabited planet.   
Pidge’s plan had required to blindside the beast by the others going against its peripheral vision while Pidge caused the vines and such to entwine and intervene against the creature, tangling it up, thus being trapped.   
Never did she take into consideration that the bear could easily retaliate in ways that even her teammates didn’t consider. In all honesty, Pidge wasn’t sure how it was all that possible. The only thing she was able to recall was securely trapping the bear before everything went black. Next thing she had known was she was opening her eyes to her team celebrating. 

 

“Guys, I think I found her. Yep, o-oh...oh quiznak…” Lance’s eyes were wide at the scene. The Green Lion was nose first into the rocky plant terrain, surrounded by fire brought on by the impact. The smoke coming up was black, signaling that the fire had hit something. 

“Well then get her,” Matthew Holt’s worried and terrified voice came over the intercom. Pidge’s sibling was still back on the castle with Coran and Keith. There was little to no way that he could come to try and find his little sister. 

“I’m going to. Shiro, Allura, check my coordinates. I’m going to need some help.” 

 

It took all four of the paladin’s half a varga before they were able to release the green lion of it’s own webbing consisting of vines and roots. Some of the roots had smashed through the front area of the lion, tangling across the dashboard of buttons and switches.   
Shiro had been the one to enter the lion to find his missing teammate, his heart rattling in his chest with every breath he tried to take. Upon entrance, Shiro felt his heart sink when he took notice to the fact that the interior of the lion had it a lot worse than any of the outside. Of course, his first instinct was to go to the chair in the center of the control panel, staring in horror.   
A large, tangled tree root had gone straight through the back of the chair, others tangling around the arm rests an one along the upper backside. The main root that had traveled through the center had also taken it’s route through the kink of the armor of the youngest paladin.   
Shiro cursed under his breath, pressing a button on the side of his helmet. “I have eyes on Kate-- Pidge, someone needs to hurry and warm up a healing pod. We’re gonna need it.”   
Shiro then paused when noting the glint out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he noted Pidge’s glasses sitting on the dash, somehow completely unharmed. He snatched them, placing them in a concealed department of his armor.  
Ignoring his teammate’s and Matt’s demands as for what had happened, Shiro sliced through the tree root the best he could without worsening Pidge’s injury. The Black Paladin gently removed her helmet in order to check for breathing and any blows to the head. Pidge’s plump lips were stained red with the same blood that trickled down the side of her mouth. They were bitten down on, as if when she received the gut injury, she had to resist herself from screaming.   
Shiro sighed with relief when he heard the faded breathing of the girl,gently lifting her into his arms as he traveled out of the lion, only hoping that they wouldn’t be too late. 

 

That night, they had gotten Pidge into a healing pod and The Green Lion into her hangar for later repairs.   
Though Coran had made some sort of apparent alien delicacy for dinner, nobody ate. Matt didn’t even come to the dining hall and instead stayed right next to Pidge’s healing pod.   
Allura had attempted to tell him that his sister would be fine, and Matt wanted to believe her, but his worry had taken over him.   
He knew that if Pidge was conscious, she would have told her older brother that she was fine and he had better things to worry about than her. She might convince him to bring her a juice box then otherwise leave her be, maybe with her handheld game device or phone.   
But she wasn’t.  
And he didn’t.   
Matt’s amber eyes drifted through the cyan colored glass towards his sister. God, she looked so small. Even in the white, skin tight suit that resembled the inner layer of her armor. That much of her armor was ruined. Matt wondered if it would repair itself, or if the castle had a spare room filled with black underwear for armor that was set up like a costume room.   
They had been courteous enough to wipe Pidge’s face of any blood or other body fluid. Through the tinted glass, Matt was able to believe that some of the bruising was already healing. Maybe that would mean that she would heal faster than expected, and not have to stay in there for three days, such as the pod suggested. Pidge was claustrophobic. Matt knew that even though she would have been able to see out of the pod, she wouldn’t have liked being in there, if she was awake. Much less for three days.   
“Hey, have you ever heard the saying ‘a watched timer doesn’t tick?’”   
Matt turned to see none other than Keith and Lance walk in, neither looking better than he felt. Matt put his face in his hands momentarily, sighing.   
“I should have been in the lion with her, I would have been able to get her out sooner, or prevented her from getting hurt at all--,” he immediately started, though felt stupid for suddenly venting through the two.   
Keith had sighed some as Lance gave a look of startled surprise.   
“Hey, don’t try and put this on yourself,” Lance sighed. “We all know that that’s something she would scoff at. Besides, if we’re playing the self-blame game, then I should say something like ‘I should have paid attention to see her lion go down,’ or ‘I knew she might have a self-sacrificial bone in her and should have thought her plan through a bit more,’” a short expression passed Lance’s face that gave both Matt and Keith an inside look to the realization that that’s exactly what he was thinking. 

“None of us knew this would happen, you two. Not even her,” Keith sighed, putting a gentle hand on Lance’s shoulder. Matt was somewhat surprised that the ball of emo was doing anything to support the two through this time. “The most we can do is wait.” 

\-- 

The three days passed. It was either Matt, Shiro, or Hunk that stayed by the pod constantly, but more than likely it being all three of them. Hunk had brought out two of her blankets from her bedroom, as if the presence of them was making a 90% difference in her healing. Nobody told him it was stupid, though. In fact, they probably found it quite smart.   
Late night of the third day, the three young men, at this point also paired with Keith and Lance, all sat around the healing pod expectantly. 

“Shouldn’t she be out by now? I feel like she should be out by now,” Hunk mentioned in worry, staring at the pod.   
Lance stood, walking over to it and pressing random buttons. “Is she dead? Is that why it’s not opening?” 

“Lance, stop messing with it,” Shiro sighed tiredly, running a hand through the white greeting of his hairline. “She’ll be awake soon.” 

Keith swatted Lance’s leg just slightly, causing the other to sigh and go back to his seating position beside the former paladin.   
Shiro looked down quietly. What if something was wrong? What if that’s why it wasn’t opening yet? What if he hadn’t gotten her back in time? These questions caused an unmistakable ache through his body, making him mentally groan in stress. 

“Number five isn’t awake yet?” 

The five boys looked over to see Coran and Allura walk in. Allura had an unreadable expression, though judging by Coran’s strained expression, they were both worried.  
The five walked over, somewhat crowding the two. 

“It shouldn’t be long now, just a couple of ticks,” Allura said reassuringly, though Shiro caught the sense of the fact that the girl was more than likely trying to reassure herself.   
Somehow, it had yet to occur to any of the five boys how worried that the two Alteans were.   
The two were still forcing themselves to cope with the loss of their planet. The loss of their former paladins. Now, only about a year later, they had another paladin’s life in their hands, just when they were starting to let themselves warm up to the new ones.   
Shiro, and apparently the others, had been so lost in thought that they didn’t sense or hear the pod opening until the chilly fog had swarmed their ankles, causing them to look over just in time to watch Pidge nearly fall on her face.   
The Black Paladin, having been the closest, turned quickly, barely managing to catch her, then tensing at the others surrounded them, all trying to make sure their friend was okay. 

“Pidge?” Shiro asked quietly, only receiving a small groan in response from the young girl as she pressed her face into his chest. 

“Let’s get her to med bay,” Allura suggested quickly. “Someone can whip her up something to eat. She needs to sit without everyone swarming her.”   
Upon this, everyone but Matt took a step back.  
Just as he had on the lion, Shiro picked the still-sleepy girl up in his arms, looking down at her in worry. He had heard Hunk mention something about food before going to the kitchen, Lance following. 

\-- 

“But did I do it, though?” It had been about an hour and a half. They had gotten Pidge changed into PJ’s consisting of boxers and a big T-Shirt that Shiro found pretty familiar.   
Both him and Matt sat with Pidge as they struggled to get her to nibble on the alien food that Hunk had prepared for her. 

“Give us all heart attacks? Yeah, you did,” Matt gave a weak laugh, sitting on the foot of her bed. Shiro sat in the chair beside her. 

“No! Not that, I meant saving the planet…”

“Yes, Pidge. You did great,” Shiro chuckled at the slight whine that Pidge’s voice held when she spoke in exasperation. “We’re all very proud of you…” 

Pidge looked up to him, squinting some. Shiro had realized why that was. His had traveled to his fanny pack where he pulled out the round framed glasses, slowly unfolding them and pushing them on Pidge’s face with a gently smile.   
The Green Paladin squinted slightly and scrunched her nose some as she took the second to let her eyes adjust. 

“You really had us all worried, Katie.” 

Pidge’s gaze drifted towards her brother as he spoke. She was about to argue that it wasn’t her fault, and that she didn’t even remember what had happened. But then she noted the tired look in Matt’s eyes. The way he held himself. Proving the fact that he had worried himself sick. That he hadn’t slept or eaten anything.   
“I’m sorry…” Her voice came out quiet as she stared at her brother. She hoped that now that she was awake, he may be able to get some sleep tonight, even if it required him staying in the bed beside hers. If anything, all her teammates would be coming to stay with her, whether she knew that or not. 

“Hey,” Shiro looked to her, brushing some stray bangs from her face. “You’re here now. And you’re alive. Plus you have a killer scar. That’s all that matters…”


End file.
